His "Cook's Tour" was a half-hour version of his current one-hour food/travelogue (which starts a new season New Year's night). The Food Network version emphasized more on the food and less on the other aspects of his destinations.

No, I think he's just trained his taste buds to ignore the tobacco flavor and zoom in on the other stuff. As for not tasting "disgusting stuff," I was watching when he tried the fermented shark. Oh, he tasted that all right!

My husband smokes three packs a day and can taste things better than I do; he catches the tiniest changes I make in my recipes. Although when he had plueresy, he stoppped smoking for a week and gave up drinking Pepsi, which he had been addicted to, because he said it tasted disgusting all of a sudden. I think he has "super" taste buds though.